Devil's Eyes
by Togale
Summary: Reflecting on his relationship with Nero, Dante is trying to find the point where exactly he had screwed the whole thing up. Dante/Nero, Vergil/Nero


Music Challenge

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Title: _**Devil's Eyes**_

Theme Song: Seether – Eyes of the Devil

Characters: Dante, Nero, Vergil

Pairing: Dante/Nero, Vergil/Nero

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**A/N:** Aaand it's done. Hm, that was fun. My first challenge. Thank you Ayumi for picking this song for me. If you don't know the song I've used for the plot, feel free to listen to it but it's not required to understand what's going on :P at least, I hope it isn't.  
I'm sure she is having a look at this, so _Sirenaloreley_, you are next. *smirk* I'll pick a nice song for you and I'll send you a message as soon as I have decided which on would be best. ;D

Thanks again _bitbyboth_ for checking my stuff for all the strange things that keep creeping into it. D:

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I messed up; simple as that. I slipped; I was screwed – big time. It wasn't an accident. Hell no, it was my fault. Maybe I could blame my rotten luck, then again, maybe I couldn't. Yet here I was, sitting in my office, waiting for him. It felt like fatal attraction; it felt like stupidity. The kid went out again tonight. Where to, I had no idea and I didn't ask. I was beyond asking by now. We don't play by the same rules anymore.

It wasn't all his fault. One day, he came to me, tattered as if Echidna herself had some fun with him, but I knew I was wrong, as soon as I saw the look in his eyes. It hadn't been a demon, who had gotten to him. It smelled like human cruelty. And so, that night, he told me all about it. Fortuna was still a wrack; a boiling hot mess, anchorless, and people needed someone to blame. Fact was, the boy had killed Sanctus a second time, after I had started the job, and even if his reasons were genuine, no one saw it that way. Fear could do that to people. To conquer fear, you would need either a good amount of courage, or you would give in to anger. It was always easier to blame someone else. So they'd abandoned him. And one day, he couldn't take it anymore. Even his girl had left him. He didn't blame her – or maybe he did, but he didn't dare to say it. She had never lived the life of an outlaw. She needed the support of her human community. She needed to be a part of it. So she'd left him. No surprise there, really.

And he told me all that, sitting on my old sofa, here at Devil May Cry, a bottle of Jack between us, which he had half emptied alone and cried his heart out. I should probably give him some credit here, he didn't cry that much. The kid is a messy crier; all angry and desperate tears, making a mess out of himself in front of others. And he knew it, so he kept it under wraps for the most part. Then he gave in, suddenly - again, not entirely his fault. Alcohol could do that to you, if you were young. Most likely, the kid never had the chance to get smashed before, considering the place he grew up. At any rate, he suddenly threw his arms around my neck and started holding on to me, as if I was his lifesaver on open sea. His skin was flushed, and he started mumbling about the room being too hot and me smelling so nice – I didn't. Seriously, I had spent the afternoon somewhere in the city, hunting down some low rank demons for too little money and hadn't even bothered to shower afterwards. After that, I had been lurking around my office at my desk, too lazy to start something else, until I ended up here on the sofa, drinking. Then again, alcohol could do that to you.

So I started petting his head and back, somewhat awkwardly, rolling my eyes as I heard him talking nonsense, asking myself, how the hell I got into this mess. Yet he didn't let go of me. It was the opposite actually. He started to touch me, like you would touch a girl. It made me almost laugh at him, almost. He was all serious about it, so I just kindly removed his groping hands from my chest and leg and looked him in the eyes. Yep, he was smashed alright. Of course he didn't see it that way. People never did, never will. For him, it all made sense, and then he came up with the stupidest excuse of all. _He needed me_. Seriously, he needed me? What kind of crap was that? He needed me? For what? To have a place to crash, now that he had lost his home? Sure he could have that. To find a shoulder to lean and cry on when everyone else had chased him away? Fine, I didn't mind. To take care of his drunk, suddenly overactive libido, which most likely hadn't had its fix in ages, since his girlfriend had kicked him out and, sure as hell, wasn't too attentive even before that? Hell, no! For all I knew, he would wake up the next morning and blaming me for molesting him in his weak, intoxicated state. Thanks, I had enough problems already.

Then he got me. Looking back, that was the point where I began to become my fault. _We are the same, you and I, right? You are the only one who's left! You are the closest thing to family I have. So take some responsibility already _- something on that line. Regardless of how much you'd claim to know about me, truth be told, I had my issues with family. Long story short, I gave in at that point; or rather, I didn't resist as much as I should have. True, I made short work of his ridiculous attempts to dominate the situation. No way in hell I would let the kid treat me like his little lost girlfriend. Before I knew it, I was in the middle of showing him how it was done in - let's call it 'my way'. From there, everything became this mess.

He moved in with me, no questions asked. We had our share of fun; eating pizza everyday, killing a bunch of demons now and then and spending the rest of our pent-up energy in my – back then our – bed. It felt great. It felt just right. It felt too damned good for me to catch on to the changes. Or maybe, I just didn't want to look too closely. He started to become more in tune with his inner devil. He seemed to like using his devil trigger more often, said it made things easier – killing, that is. It was true enough, and seeing him so powerful, yet so submissive when it came to sharing the bed with me, simply pleased me back then. But it was short-lived. 'Boys are ambitious.' Ever heard of that? I should have noticed back then. Ever so often, words like _power_ and _might_ kept creeping into his vocabulary and suddenly, he was all against our laid-back life back then. That's when I first caught him talking to himself, or rather, to the voice inside his head. It happened to me too, no kidding. Sometimes, you could get so in tune with the other side of you, the part that isn't human, that you could hear it whisper to you. Damn good company sometimes, but most of the time, you'd better tell it to shut the fuck up and keep pretending to be deaf, if you plan on spending the rest of your mortal life among humans.

Back then, we had our first big job in weeks. Some big shot demon lord had made his way into the human realm and had gathered every weaker dark soul it could reach around him. To be honest, the kid and I had the fight of our life. There was no day we didn't end up all tattered and bloody with smoking hot barrels and blood dripping swords. Back then, we hadn't felt so lucky to have demonic blood that kept us healing as fast as they would cut into us for a long time. That was also the time, when he came up with the idea to rule over those demons instead of just killing them. I thought he had lost his mind. He kept on talking about all this nonsense, about how much more efficient it would be, to get them to submit to us, rather then disposing of all of them, so they could take care of the weaklings; that we should _control_ them. Words like that winded me up, and we started fighting after every god damned job. On the third night, he moved into his own room.

He kept on talking. If not to me, then to the voice inside his head, which seemed oh-so-eager to indulge him. One night, I passed his room after a badly needed shower and heard him talking. Lately, I hadn't been listening to him, because I didn't want us to fight again. Honestly, I wanted to patch things up between us, but after what I heard that night, not so much anymore. _Sometimes it's hard to believe that he is your brother. You know what I mean? He is so different_. That really got to me. And I kept blaming myself that I shouldn't have let him keep Yamato, I should have kept an eye on him. It was too late by then. Strangely enough, it wasn't as surprising as I first thought. With my brother involved, something like that was bound to happen sooner or later. That bastard had always found some way to fuck my life up for good. Really, no surprise there.

Yet, I kept letting him come back to me. We didn't share the same room anymore, but that didn't keep him from joining me late at night. With all the things between us, the sex became more feral. It was good for a while, it reminded us of what we had, of what we didn't want to lose, but in the end, it wasn't enough. It was clear to me, that he wanted something else instead. He just didn't admit it; neither to me, nor to himself. For a while, he didn't have to. It was too easy for him to pretend to have it all. One night, we had come home from yet another bloody fight and didn't even make it to the shower. Instead, we landed on my bed, and I had him undressed in under a minute. The sex was rough, more than usual, and as I made him come, it wasn't my name anymore that escaped his lips in a shuddering moan. It was my brother's. It should have stung. It didn't. As my young lover slipped into the comforting darkness of oblivious sleep that night, I took my weapons and headed out to hunt, whatever dared to cross my way. I wasn't angry. I wasn't even disappointed. What irritated me the most was the fact that it didn't get to me in the first place. There should have been something.

I tried to keep my distance from there on. I tried. I just didn't succeed as much as I'd liked to. He was still the young man I wanted under all those flaws. He realized that something had changed between us, but I wasn't ready to talk about it. I kept avoiding the topic the best I could, and he didn't like it one bit. Not that it made much of a difference anyway. He had found his guidance, his support. He didn't need me for that anymore. Once again, my brother had taken everything. So I sent him a silent salute in my mind, admitting my defeat. I bet it pleased him. I bet it made him laugh_. You want him, brother? Then take him. But take good care of him. Don't leave it up to me to pick up the pieces afterwards._

That was the point that keeps me irritated the most. I thought I had come to terms with everything back then. I had. My next mistake was, to keep the boy around. Back then, I told myself, that I couldn't just chase him off. He didn't deserve that. So he stayed and became my constant reminder of what I had lost. It wasn't all bad. – Or maybe it was but not momentarily. Sometimes I gave in to sex and he rewarded me with unusual affection afterwards. I was his substitute, I just didn't admit it. Time after time I fell into this trap. It killed me. I could feel myself getting numb inside.

But life wasn't a fairytale; there were only these kinds of happy ends that were forged by your own hand. What happened? Nothing really. The pizza in front of me on the desk was already cold and almost forgotten. I heard the door to my office open, revealing, without a doubt, the young man, who still lived under the same roof as me. I told myself not to look up from the magazine in my hands. Yet I did. And there he was. It was a shame, really. That boy, he had me on the first night we shared my bed. Youth was radiating from him in all its beauty. But now there was a self-pleased grin on his lips, and by the look of his eyes, I could tell that he was once again listening to the voice I couldn't hear. By now, he was beyond my reach.


End file.
